What teams should last longest in the NCAA tournament?

Mar. 16, 2014
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American Athletic Conference tournament MVP Russ Smith and Louisville appear to be as hot as any team entering the NCAA tournament field. The Cardinals are the defending champs. / Nelson Chenault, USA TODAY Sports

by John Ewing, Special for USA TODAY Sports

by John Ewing, Special for USA TODAY Sports

The final pre-Selection Show bracketology from USA TODAY Sports is up. Based on that projected bracket, we ran a simulation and found that the following teams figure to make it to North Texas in April for the Final Four: Louisville, Wichita State, Florida and Duke. In that bracket, Louisville would beat Wichita State, and Florida would beat Duke.

Florida is the most likely champion. We had seen its odds to win it all decrease the last two weeks, but in this simulation the Gators' odds actually improved to 11.4% (well below Louisville last year and Kentucky the year before). The primary reason for the increase in Florida's odds is that its region is relatively weak. Wisconsin (the 2 seed), Syracuse (the 3 seed), and Cincinnati (the 4 seed) rank 13th, 20th, and 26th respectively in our most recent Power Rankings. As always, path and seed in the tournament are crucial.

The most likely championship game features Florida vs. Louisville. However, if that game did occur, we would now favor Louisville to win but in a close game, 50.5% of the time by an average score of 65.6-65.5.

We really like Louisville, currently No. 2 in our Power Rankings. The difference between Florida the No. 1 team in our rankings and Louisville is just 0.02%. Basically, they are No. 1a and 1b.

There are 22 teams in this simulations that have at least a 1% chance of winning it all.